


Hide and Seek

by dragonofdispair



Series: Unrelated Prompt Responses [16]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: M/M, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 09:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4741346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a mission gone wrong, they both just want to hide and Jazz thinks hiding out together is better than hiding alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hide and Seek

**Author's Note:**

> For the prowlxjazz livejournal community anniversary challenge:
> 
> Our oreos need to recharge like all other Cybertronians. Now in this world, recharging involves plugging yourself into the main computer system for proper defragmentation. While your processor gets recharged, your consciousness is put into a virtual reality world created by the main computer system. (Think holodeck on Startrek, except instead of walking into a room they’re plugging themselves in directly). Cybertronians can interact with others plugged into the system or choose not to interact with any other recharging mech/femme by changing the settings prior to entering recharge (important if a mech/mechs want privacy). This system is controlled by artificial intelligence and reacts according to each mech’s needs/wishes/desires.
> 
> In this VR world, Cybertronians can use their holo avatars to become anything/anyone they want. Animal, human, organic, go wild, be creative!

It had been a rough few days.

It should have been a simple prisoner exchange after a battle. Trading Ironhide and Warpath for Laserbeak should have been a no brainer, ‘cept the ‘Cons would only trade one for one, and wouldn’t consider otherwise, not even after Jazz’d called up Soundwave personally and talked. Interrogator to worried cassette-carrier.

Well Jazz couldn’t let Sounders call his bluff like that without responding. Bad enough Megatron sneered and called them all soft-sparked morons for insisting they get both their bots back, or because they didn’t routinely torture captured cannon fodder, or whatever reason Megs could think of. Jazz could not, just could not, have Soundwave doubting his word like that, else no threat he ever made would carry any power again. 

He said as much. “Can’t have you doubting me, ‘Wave. Now that you’ve called m’bluff, I don’t ‘zactly have a choice do I?”

“Negative,” Soundwave agreed, digitized monotone flatter than usual with resignation. “Direct orders from Megatron do not allow for private negotiation. Consequences: understood.”

Jazz could almost respect him for not attempting to negotiate a set of terms he couldn’t follow through on or trying to deceive him. He still left the comm line open so Soundwave could listen to the little birdie-bot shriek.

Neither begged for him to stop. He wouldn’t — couldn’t — have, and that they both knew it well enough not to even ask, well that just made him feel worse.

And since Megatron wasn’t willing to trade Ironhide back, that meant a rescue — one that had to be planned and underway by the time the trade was scheduled in a couple of days. If there was a bright side to this it was that Ironhide could at least keep his trap shut during a stealthful getaway.

Mission planned, decoys set, the mission had still gone to the Pit. What should have been a simple prisoner exchange and simultaneous quick jaunt onto the Nemesis to pick up Ironhide had turned into two concurrent battles that had left most of them injured in some way and Ironhide in forced stasis.

After the fracas, almost everyone expected him to either attend the during-defrag victory party, or to engage privacy mode so he could brood in the peace of his own VR world. Jazz did neither.

From his perch on the roof of Twilight Sparkle’s library, he watched his fellow Autobots party down in Ponyville’s town square. Animals were popular skins for ‘bots right now. It was easy to see who had picked out tonight’s VR location. There was Blaster, decked out like a male Pinkie Pie from the curls of his bright pink mane to the balloons of his adorable cutie mark and complete with the Party Cannon he was still indiscriminately blasting everywhere though the town was already covered in confetti. Several others had come as ponies, but not everyone. Ironhide (good to see that Ratchet felt confident enough to pull him out of stasis and put him into a proper recharge) was a Clydesdale draft horse — no candy-colored ponies for him. Optimus was familiar in the form of his favorite yellow labrador - great dane mutt. The Protectobots, minus First Aid, were also dogs, but cartoonish ones more fitting with the ponies around them and wearing specially-fitted rescue uniforms Jazz vaguely recognized from a cartoon they liked right now.

Grimlock was a robot t-rex, albeit one appropriately sized to attend the party. Good luck getting him to take on another form during defrag. It usually took a special event and a direct order from Prime to get him to go as far as human. Jazz could respect the strength of identity that took, but it wasn’t exactly healthy for a transformer.

Usually Jazz’d be right down there, all dressed up as Vinyl Scratch (original female flavor; Jazz didn’t hold to generbending the cannon ponies) and mixing up some sweet tunes for everyone to dance the night away to. It was fun, and watching Ratchet throw a fit — the same fit he threw every time the shared VR was Ponyville — was the highlight of the night. But the medic hadn’t arrived and probably wouldn’t tonight. When Jazz himself had been kicked out of medbay with strict instructions to recharge and defrag, Ironhide had still been in critical condition.

Instead he flew away from the lights and the music and the cheers of victory on the silent wings of a black and white tiger owl. So silent that sharp-eared Steeljaw (pretending to be a grey three-tailed fox for the night) never heard him. The owl was one of his favorites, though most of his fellow Autobots didn’t know to look for him wearing this form. There was just something about its perfect dedication to stealth and the way it saw the VR world — excellent eyesight, but hearing was in another category altogether, so crisp and clear that anything louder than a mouse’s heartbeat was almost painful — that made it a good fit for Jazz the Spec Ops agent, but not for Jazz the Partier. There was someone else avoiding the party Jazz doubted had engaged privacy mode, who was maybe lurking in a form no one would think to associate with him.

The Everfree Forest around Ponyville was still creepy as the Pit, but a safe place to party was the order of the night, so it was free of the timber wolves and diamond dogs and poison joke flowers that made it dangerous to ponykind on more adventurous nights. Things rustled in the underbrush or called to each other just beyond sight. Just enough to give a bot a thrill but never coming close enough to go from I-dare-you-to-spend-a-night-in-the-haunted-mansion levels of creepy to outright fright.

When he got there, landing on the window sill and nudging the glass open with his beak, Zecora’s cottage was empty. The cartoon physics of the VR world meant it was impossible to tell if Zecora had been here or not. A fire was always cheerily burning in the hearth. A potion of some sort always bubbled merrily away, filling the house with fragrant smoke. But Jazz had his ways. He perched on the table and turned the page of the potion book, half expecting neat columns of Cybertronian glyphs; Prowl never could let the mission reports go until morning.

Nothing. Just a vaguely arcane diagram and some squiggly lines to represent text. Okay, so Prowl wasn’t skinned as Ponyville’s resident outcast tonight, which meant he really didn’t want to go to the party. If he’d been Zecora, he’d’ve been just waiting for someone to think to invite him. But that was okay; Jazz didn’t feel like partying either.

Ten minutes later, he was perched on the chimney peering out into the scary woods thoughtfully.

Alright. He preened his wing a bit as he tried to think this through logically, smoothing out feathers in a self-soothing mannerism Jazz was quite frankly amazed even worked. It’s not like his native form had any feathers, but the sensation of bringing all the pinions into precise zipper-locked place was strangely calming. Every time he did this, it occurred to him that this must be what Prowl felt when he compulsively straitened his desk. If I were an antisocial tactician, where (and what) would I be?

Anyone else would have long before now concluded Prowl had engaged privacy mode for the night. Truth was Prowl almost never defragged in privacy mode. He just knew all the best ways to hide, but staying in the public realm was a sure clue that he wasn’t averse to being found.

The VR realm was as large as it needed to be to contain everyone connected to the defrag computer. Once, on Cybertron, under the weight of thousands of bots’ expectations, each mind trying to correct what he saw as “wrong” with the VR world, the realms had defaulted to a reflection of Cybertron. The supposed “mechanical shapeshifters” had mostly stuck to trying out different frame types or new alt modes. No imagination at all. Now. Now with Earth’s humans and its fauna and their TV and games and … just everything available to catch a bot’s imagination, the VR realms had exploded with variety. On Cybertron, if he’d wanted to find someone he suspected was hiding in a public realm, he’d immediately start checking the vents for minicons or cleaning drones; Earth was trickier. It would help that Prowl had the sort of imagination that would try and correct what he saw as “wrong” with the area immediately around himself if he wasn’t participating in the cartoon fantasy. He probably didn’t even realize he affected the realm like that or he’d never allow it.

He flew up to the top of the tallest tree he could find. Most of the horizons were cartoon pine trees all the way to the painted backdrop, but one direction looked a bit more…naturalistic. He took off in that direction.

This far from the party, and moving away from the cartoon dangers of the Everfree, the forest was quiet. To an owl’s hearing it could never be silent, but the real-world critters Prowl’s processor had conjured knew death flew among the branches on silent feathers and acted accordingly. Jazz did his best to pay attention to each one. The mice and voles, the crickets and frogs, the moths, the fireflies…any could be Prowl.

But the VR realm had its tells. The forest was programmed to be safe tonight. No predators that would bother a mech’s chosen form should be present. Spotting a frog staking out his territory on a log meant he wasn’t looking for an insect. A bobcat eliminated the frogs, mice, voles and rabbits as suspects. A bear (which the computer hastily deleted as soon as Jazz swooped close) eliminated almost everything else, and he doubted that a Prowl drenched in can’t-find-me and don’t-bother-me vibes would choose to be a bear.

Jazz wished he could just comm Hound, but that would defeat the purpose.

Which left Jazz with a puzzle. Prowl always had known how to cheer him up.

Maybe he was hiding as a cop car and that’s why there was no gaps in the food chains? Except, no. A Cybertronian would stand out like a dinobot at a petting zoo in these woods. An owl’d hear the engine noise from miles away, even if he’d found someplace where a car wouldn’t be seen.

He actually landed on a nearby pine tree and had been wondering what was odd about what he was seeing for several minutes when he realized he’d found his answer. What sort of critter had nothing to fear from everything from bats to bears? That no Autobot would come looking for or risk poking on the off chance it was their wayward tactician? Who’s threat was mostly nonphysical and so the VR realm wouldn’t automatically delete it from the world, but everyone knew not to bother?

If I were an antisocial tactician, what would I be?

A skunk.

And not one of the cutsie squirrel-sized skunks that always hung out around Fluttershy’s house, but a big fluffy creature with a dramatic stripe down his back that could probably outright maul any bear that wasn’t deterred by the threat of stink.

Silently he glided down to do a dramatic pass over the skunk’s back, skimming thick fur with soft wing feathers, then a swift wing-over to land in a whirl of feathers on the ground facing the skunk, which glared his beady eyes in threat. He was one of the larger owls, but a large owl was still small enough to take some damage from a skunk’s teeth and claws. Jazz fluffed his feathers in victory when the VR computer didn’t immediately delete the “threat”.

“Hey Prowler,” He said softly, “Found ya.”

The skunk shook himself, beady eyes narrowing further for a moment. In this form he didn’t have any doorwings to telegraph his moods, but that tail worked almost as well and Jazz could see the exact moment Prowl relaxed and accepted his company. “So you did.”

.  
.

End

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Shiny](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798766) by [12drakon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/12drakon/pseuds/12drakon)




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